“We Are Not Scared Of Anything”

The legal battle between the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and the Minister of Transport, Dr Winfred Richard Anane is not over yet as the former has announced a new date for the release of its report. Yesterday news hungry journalists and the curious public were disappointed when CHRAJ announced a postponement of the release of its report to September 16.
ADM's source at CHRAJ could not “leak” any reason but an official statement cited administrative and other reasons.. However the source revealed that the committee has finished with all its investigations and that the change of date came only the night before the day for the announcement. “No explanation was given to it, but they have finished all their investigations”, the source said. When ADM contacted the Dr. Richard Anane's public relations officer, Mr. Ken Anku, he also expressed surprised at the postponement. He said it is the decision that CHRAJ took and has nothing to do with the minister.

He said: “We came to Accra yesterday morning only to be notified that it has been postponed… We have always made it clear that we are always there to assist the committee. We are not bothered where and when they finished their investigations, because we know we have done nothing wrong and we are not scared of anything.” Mr. Anko told ADM that though Dr. Anane gives much prominence to the committee's work, it has not taken any steam away from his performance in serving the nation.

“Someone would have been saddled by such false accusations, but he is not, he is still doing the good work and would continue to do it till the people say he should stop” He noted that for the past three months, the minister has been touring the country to monitor the progress of the various roads under construction. As ADM reported yesterday, the last sitting of the committee about a month ago, brought about a lot of constitutional matters, which may yet lead to further interpretations at the Supreme Court. It all dwells on the interpretation of the constitution.

Though the cocaine investigations are still hogging many headlines, ADM received comments from some people still quite interested in the “Anane case”. The following are some comments taken from the web. One Mr. Osei Kofi wrote: “Looks like there are many clauses that need to be expunged from the constitution apart from the indemnity clause. It's full of flaws, this constitution.” Blue print from Kumasi said: “Let's concentrate on the good work Anane is doing. Politics is a difficult game to play. When you are outside you may think is easy to play.

The moment you become a player you realize that it is not that easy. The reason is that you soon realize that you can't please all the people. The party in power must therefore focus on a programme or a few of them and manage to bring them to pass. President Kufour's NPP government has done well if one looks at where they started from, and yet they have not and will not be able to please all the people of the land. I do believe that to name but a few of that which the NPP had archieved includes health and education, for they are better today than before the NPP came to power.

There is peace and security found in Ghana today, and Ghana is today known in the world community. The land where there is peace and security there is also stability. The people cannot expect any government to deliver one hundred percent to one hundred percent of the people. If that was possible then we will have one political party in power forever. Let us learn to appreciate what we have and take the good with the bad, hoping to change or eliminate the bad. See the unity the Black Stars brought to our nation? Was it not under the same NPP government? Come now, can we have anything good to say about President Kufour? Yes indeed we can, then why not we rally behind him to encourage him to finish his mandate.

Is President Kufour perfect? No, because if he was he will be God. He is a true leader born to do as much as he can for God's people within a specific time frame.” Sarpong who did not identify where he was writing from was very furious with ADM's words of guilty or not guilty. “You wrote CHRAJ is a fact finding body, fact finding bodies gather evidence and present them to the right authorities for prosecution. In the United States this is what is called a Grand Jury, they gather evidence from witnesses and based on what they find out, will bound the accused over to the court for prosecution or advise the court not to prosecute. CHRAJ is not a court and in the real sense of the legal lexicon, cannot find anybody guilty or not guilty.”